Do you support the death penalty?

Just wondering...

As well as for anyone who molests a child under 12 or engages in cruelty to animals.

100% asset confiscation for the rest of their lives. Make them beg for food in the street.

... should get a "death penalty". But, since they were never actually "alive", that wouldn't count in a poll like this.

Who commits a heinous crime that is punishable by death.

A long, dank prison sentence is a better punishment.

Besides, we need to keep freaks like this alive, and study them.

My parents, Mr. kt and I have it written in our wills that under no circumstance, in the event our death is a homicide, do we want anyone punished by death. Granted, there may not be much we can do about it, but in our final statements, we don't want someone to be put to death using our name.

The rest of our will are pretty boring.

Good job! :thumbsup:

In practice, it's too damned expensive to ensure guilt, so innocents wind up dead.

It's one of the few punishments from which there is no way back.

Death is to easy. A criminal should be forced to live with his crime.

Not normally the case.

But prison is forever.

Executing a person does.
What if something comes up that proves he is innocent?
You can't free a dead man.

If you've proven guilt then a scaffold and noose are plenty cheap.

They don't PROVE guilt or innocence.

I have a perhaps-strange exception for people who commit treason...the only crime for which it seems even remotely legitimate for the state to execute someone is the one focused towards the destruction of the state.

Generally no though...I'm an opponent of the death penalty.

I have no particular moral objection to executing people who've committed atrocious crimes. I doubt many people do, it's just a matter of where you draw the line. How many people think that Hermann Goring or Reinhard Heydrich should have been sentenced to life in prison? (Theoretical question with regard to Heydrich, I know.) But since death is irrevocable, this would have to be dependent on absolute certainty that the person had committed the crime. Most of the time, our justice system can't provide that certainty, as evidenced by the number of people who've been exhonorated years after the fact. If innocent people can be convicted under our system--and they can--then eventually innocent people will be executed. I'm sure it's happened before and will happen again. That's unacceptable.

And the criminal is always around if it turns out later that he was innocent.

people who kill don't plan on getting caught. Also, I wish some of those they killed were still around to study - maybe we could figure out what the hell is wrong with them.

I also think imprisonment is a better deterrent.

Good point about the studying.

is the entity to take it out for their people. I also don't think personal vengeance is healthy.

I won't commit to an absolute position on this or most other issues. I leave binary thinking to the repugs.
:-)

In August 1995, my niece's best friend (19 at the time) was in an apartment with 2 other girls and 2 guys. This took place in Riverside, California. One of the guys was taking drugs and got crazy. He tried to rape my niece's best friend and she fought back. He stabbed her and killed her. The other 2 girls (I think 13 and 15) somehow got involved and also were stabbed to death. The other guy who was there was passed out on drugs and slept through the entire thing. The crazy guy tried to set the apartment on fire, but the smoke somehow set off alarms or someone called the fire department, and they arrived, put out the fire and discovered the bodies. The guy confessed to doing it and said the other guy slept through it all. The other guy was not charged. The one guy was charged and eventually convicted of 3 murders, and is on death row in San Quentin. At least as far as I know he is still there. I was always ambivalent about the death penalty before that, and frankly I am still ambivalent about it, except for that case. My niece named her only daughter, born 15 years after the incident, after her best friend Tricia who was murdered that night in 1995. As far as I know, the murderer has been sitting on death row for 10 years. I haven't heard anything about it recently. It kind of changed my opinion about the death penalty, though I am still leaning against it, I think there are some cases where I might consider it appropriate.

http://www.press-enterprise.com/newsarchive/1999/11/23/943333484.html

...

n/t

They should give all inmates the option. It would save money and resources. I also believe the option should be available to any person for that matter, people should have the right to a painless controlled exit if that's want, after counseling and a waiting period of course.

Isn't funny though that the majority of us are against the death penalty but pro-choice, while the right wing is pro-death penalty and pro-life?

even the criminal justice system.

I think in somewhat rare instances it can be justified, but only if the murder(s) and evidence fit meet certain criteria.

Of course that doesn't mean that I could ever vote to sentence someone to death, I probably couldn't do it.

Until such time as court trials can be proved to be 100% accurate (which is never), the ultimate punishment should be to remove the offender from society, never to return. Visiting retribution upon some miscreant is not something the state should take part in, only the protection from possible future offenses. They should simply remove the convicted criminal and put him somewhere where he can live out the rest of his days separated from those he would harm. He shouldn't be part of the "correctional" system, as it is futile to try to correct behavior if there is to be no re-integration into society. There are many remote, uninhabited islands in the world, let them stay there.

It's a lot cheaper than the death penalty, which involves a expensive appeals process (especially in California).

There are many criminals who commit acts so heinous that death is the closest thing to a just consequence. But in the absence of a trustworthy agent to administer this punishment fairly (and the huge gray areas involved in defining what fair is) we're better off not having the death penalty.

:rofl:

However, if you put child molesters in the general population of the prison with "BABY RAPER" printed in big block letters on the back of their uniforms, I have no objection to the inmates taking care of that problem themselves. And they will.... just call up Hell and ask Jeff Dahmer. Or that piece of shit "priest" formerly from Boston.

Seriously.

there are times when I'm so disgusted by a particular crime that I find myself having some very disturbing mixed feelings about it.

That really sucks.

I know that some innocent people have been convicted, so that's why I'm against it.

But then there are cases where someone is caught red-handed, and I think well send the bastard to hell, but then I think that maybe the family of the victim should have the final say in it. Yes or no. Oftentimes the families are willing to forgive the person. I think if they can forgive, then maybe execution isn't the answer.

How would I feel if someone murdered a close friend or loved one of mine? Would I want revenge? Would I want to see the bastard executed?

I'd like to say "No", but I can't say what I would do under those circumstances...

and there are no significant mitigating circumstances.

I think it has been used too often when there wasn't certainty.

For any reason.

If the DP were an effective deterrent, wouldn't we be executing fewer people instead of more?

It turns the state and therefore the citizens into murderers by proxy; innocent people can be and have been executed; and there is no evidence that it is a deterrent. Moreover, it can tempt people who have committed one murder to murder any possible witnesses; and instituting the DP for rape and child molestations would tempt the criminals to murder their victims so that they can 'tell no tales'.

We have not had the DP in the UK since the 1960s, and I do not want it reinstated.